Thai team confirms cats just as hamsters, are spreaders of Covid, prescribes masks for pets
First there were sneezing hamsters, now sneezing cats. A team in Thailand reports the first solid evidence of a pet cat infecting a person with SARS-CoV-2, adding felines to the list of animals that can transmit the virus to people. Researchers say the results are convincing. They are surprised that...
Devil in Gunners’ magazine: Filibustering Arsenal may be gazumped by bullish Man United – again!
Arsenal are in danger of being gazumped for a second transfer target after Manchester United made a rival offer to sign Ajax defender Lisandro Martinez, according to reports. The Gunners moved into the driving seat to sign the Argentine after submitting an improved £34.5 million bid earlier this week, although...
Why Cameroon remains wedded to demobilisation of Ambazonia separatists in anglophone south
Ambazonia fighters – separatist insurgency in anglophone Cameroon – many of whom had missed critical years of schooling, were encouraged to surrender and take advantage of skills programmes – from computer training to poultry farming and tailoring. The idea was that they would then graduate as young entrepreneurs, capable of...
Broken promises: Cameroon’s plan to lure separatist fighters stutters as ex-guerrillas feel cheated
John Ngah* is a keen amateur footballer, but at the end of each game, when his team mates head off to their families, he heads back to the Buea Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Centre (DDRC) – his home for the past two years. The 22-year-old is a former combatant in...
Ukraine war: How Western aeroplanes ae falling apart in Russia as sanctions against Moscow bite
An Airbus A320-232 with the tail number YU-APH made its first flight on December 13, 2005. Since then, the aircraft has clocked millions of miles, flying routes for Air Deccan, Kingfisher Airlines, Bingo Airways, and Syphax Airlines before being taken over by Air Serbia, the Eastern European country’s national flag...
Smell a friend: Evidence shows human beings ‘click’ instantly with people with similar body smell
People with similar body odours are more likely to ‘click’ and become instant friends, according to several experiments. When people meet others for the first time, they sometimes experience an “immediate strong click that makes us feel as if we have already been good friends for years,” says Inbal Ravreby...
English Premier Leagues top 10 teams that splashed big bucks to acquire mediocrity
Manchester United spent £140 million to go from fourth to fifth and crash out of the Champions League at the group stage while playing the most turgid football imaginable under Louis van Gaal. If the previous summer’s acquisition of Angel Di Maria for £67 million marked the start of United’s...
The rich also cry: Moneyed Man United summer transfer spurges ranks it top of 10 EPL wasteful spenders
t’s a good one this, because it’s both an absurd summer of spaffing that in textbook fashion contributed to a manager failing to see out the year but also produced a season where one of those overpriced signings scored the winning goal in the Champions League final. Classic slice of...
Witness recalls how ex-US president Trump tried to force his bodyguards to take him to Capitol Hill to join rioters
Former US President Donald Trump wanted to join the January 6 rioters at the Capitol, but was restrained by his security detail, a former aide testified on Tuesday. Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Trump tried to grab the steering wheel...
How shades of inequality in research deepen discrimination by gender, age, education, incomes or race
Vida Maralani began her career studying whether education is, in fact, the ticket to socio-economic advancement and reducing inequalities, as she’d been taught. “I’ve evaluated some of the most expensive social policies our government has ever funded to prevent school dropouts,” says Maralani, interim director of the Centre for the...
